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“Carrying the Curry”

Every day about 5,000 dabbawalas, or lunch box people, deliver nearly a quarter-million home-cooked lunches around Mumbai, India…a city of seventeen million people…at a high speed and WITHOUT ERROR!

What’s their secret?

Their mission is simple – serve their customers accurately and on time, every time.

Their value proposition – to bring a fresh, home-cooked lunch right to you, not matter where you are.

Their core process – after collecting the lunchboxes between nine and ten in the morning, the dabbawalas pack them onto trolleys and push them to the railway station. The boxes go by train to a central station for unloading. Each box is color-coded so that those going to similar destinations end up on the same trolley. A given lunchbox might pass through the hands of four different dabbawalas before it arrives at its destination by 12:30 pm At the receiving station, the dabbawalas load the boxes onto their trademark silver bicycles. They have only to navigate through one of the largest, most crowded and most complicated cities in the world. In the afternoon, they reverse the process picking up the empty boxes and returning them to the residents. That’s more than 400,000 nearly mistake free transactions every single day- for more than a century.

If the dabbawala-way works in such a complex environment – it is sure to work in much simpler situations.

Do you have a personal mission?

Do you know and understand yourself and what you bring to the table?

Do you have a simple, visible and consistent process for getting results?

If you have a process in place but not getting to the outcomes you want then email me giselle@gisellehudson.com Let’s talk about how I might be able to help you.